Friday, September 30, 2005

Bennett, who held prominent posts in the administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, told a caller to his syndicated radio talk show Wednesday: "If you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.

"That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down," he said. [CNN.com]

I wonder if Bennett has considered what aborting *every* fetus would do to the crime rates?

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Last night was another big Red Sox game (another miserable loss)plus the season premiere of Veronica Mars and a chance for me to catch last week's Lost before the new episode, I'd dutifully avoided reading anything about it, or any teasers for episode two, so it was all new to me.

VM was disappointing. I got hooked this summer and had high hopes for the new season. Pretty much dashed. I think it was a mistake to try to jam in a bunch of exposition to pick up from where the last season left off -- the waitress job, breaking up with Logan, getting back with Duncan, all in flashback was just too much. None of it was handled convincingly. And the bus crash at the end didn't sit quite right. And is the ghost of Lilly Kane going to keep showing up to save her life? This episode had sophomore slump written all over it.

Lost, on the other hand, hit the ground running. From last week's premiere, I knew right away that the other runner in the stadium was the guy down the hatch, so I was listening for something that would tip off his being from the island already but the only thing that struck me as possibly having double meaning was his "lift it up" comment -- vague enough to mean anything, or nothing. As for Desomond saying he's training to race around the world, I suppose that could be a hint he left the island to meet with the future castaways before they got on Flight 815, or it could be an explanation of how he ended up on the island? Episode 2 didn't really add much, felt like a stretcher episode, padding between the episodes where something actually happens. Hugo's numbers stop a countdown, but a countdown to what?

Monday, September 19, 2005

This is what the interet is all about: the ability to summon the moving image of a roasted chicken wearing a lettuce mawashi giving another roasted chicken E. Honda's famous Thousand Hand Slap whenever you want!

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Kim Stanley Robinson Interviewed in the Guardian
KSR is a little more rambunctious than usual in this interview. You can tell he's as pissed off as the rest of us about the incompetence and mendacity of W's administration (and their apologists):

"And in terms of the president, there are similarities, but I wanted mine to be much nicer. The current guy is worthless, probably the worst president in American history. There's a sort of stupid, small-minded meanness - a pathological assholery - to him. I think he likes doing bad things. And I think a fair amount of his base approves of that resentment - against the idea of progress, against the future, against the rest of the world ...

"It's heads-down time over here. Now we're in it, and it's a godawful point in history, but I cross my fingers for an honest election in 2008. There is a lot of awareness in the States of the severity of the situation, and maybe this hurricane will foreground it again - another obvious sign that there's a problem. On we go."

Wednesday, September 7, 2005

I'm not sure if I'm laughing at the joke or the context. Just funny. Made me think of ReaderCon all those years ago.

"Is a Klingon warrior red?" he boomed. "No! He is green!" Suddenly this reporter was surrounded by laughing Klingons. "It's hard to explain to humans why that's funny," one said, raising his flagon of blood wine and drinking.